The Hair

O fleece, rolling down unto the very neck!

O locks! O perfume laden with no mischief!

Ecstasy! To people tonight the bedchamber dark

With memories asleep within that hair sans cark,

I’d shake it in the air like a handkerchief!

 

Asia full of languor and hot-weather Afric,

A whole world distant, absent, nearly dead it seems,

Lives within your depths, forest aromatic!

As other spirits sail upon the sea of music,

Mine, o my dearest! on your perfume swims.

 

I would go where tree and man, full of juice,

Swoon them lengthily beneath the ardor of climates;

Strong tresses, be the swell that bears me hence!

You hold, ebony sea, a dream of brilliance

In sails, in rowing men, in flames and masts of frigates:

 

A resounding port where my soul can drink

In great floods perfume, sonorousness and hue;

Where vessels, all a-glide in gold and watered silk,

Open their vast arms to embrace the glorious ilk

Of a puremost sky where eternal heat’s a-brew.

 

I would plunge my head in love with drunkenness

Within that darkling ocean where the other’s enclosed;

And my subtle mind in the ship’s caress

Will be able to find you, o fecund idleness!

Everlasting cradlings of balmy leisure posed!

 

Bluish head of hair, pavilion of shadows fixed,

You render me the sky’s azure immense and round;

Upon the downy edges of your tight-turned wicks

I grow burning drunk with aromas mixed

Of oil of coconut, of musk and tar in-bound.

 

Long and long! always! my hand in your thick mane

Will richly sow the pearl, the sapphire and the ruby,

So that from my desire your hearing shall not wane!

Are you not the oasis where I muse, and the canteen

Where I inhale most deep the wine of memory?

 

Charles Baudelaire